Bloks

After a recent capital raise and pivot to focusing on the VC market, Marc approached me to make an explainer video for Bloks. He wanted to highlight the how the features benefit venture capitalists, making the dull, routine aspects of their work much more efficient.

I started by storyboarding the script Marc provided me with. Based on the storyboards, we tweaked the script a little, then modified the storyboards some more.

Storyboards for scene 1, showing a character sitting at a table, being covered in paper, then a red block sweeps the paper away
Storyboards for scene 2, showing a meeting between a VC and potential investees, while the details of the conversation are collected by Bloks
Storyboards for scene 3, showing Bloks processing documents, conversations, emails, and websites then transfering relevant information to the user's CRM of choice
Storyboards for scenes 4 and 5, showing a meeting brief saving a user's meeting, and Bloks doing the work of writing reports for another user
Storyboards for scenes 6, 7, and 8, showing the efficiency of using Bloks, its high standard for data security, and its contextual relevance as a product in the VC world

Scene 1 Storyboards

The Blok sweeps away all the paperwork, leaving the character to get to more meaningful work.

Scene 2

An investment meeting is processed by Bloks, so no one needs to worry about taking notes.

Scene 3

Bloks works through a user’s documents, conversations, emails, and websites for relevant information then sends that data to the user’s CRM of choice.

Scenes 4 and 5

Bloks gives one user a brief just before a meeting, filling them in on relevant, timely details. Bloks writes a report for another user while they relax.

Scenes 6, 7, and 8

Bloks gives a user futuristic power of insight and efficiency. Data security is taken seriously by Bloks, with the highest standard certification. Finally, Bloks should appeal as a product to VCs investing in the latest technologies.

Once that was settled, I wanted to get the voiceover done for proper timing of the video. We considered using AI, but the tone emphasis never quite came out right. I found Megan Billingsley on Upwork and she had exactly the voice we were looking for, a very close match to the AI voice we were considering. She sent me two versions of her voiceover and I spliced together the better parts of each.

Then I started vectoring the elements for the animation. I knew some parts I wanted built in 3D to make their animation more efficient and their lighting more accurate. I had initially storyboarded a fancy 180° turnaround shot for the first scene but eventually scrapped it to make the hand animation more efficient.

I also wanted the falling paper to be 3D elements, but wrangling the physics engine to do exactly what I wanted was proving to be too difficult. I ended up vectoring and animating the paper by hand with quite pleasing results.

I grabbed and tweaked a free typewriter model from Turbosquid for scene 5. I whipped up all the other 3D models myself, including a pose-able reference character, chair, table, laptop, keyboard, mouse, safe, and all the random shapes in scene 8 representing technology. I used simple 2 or 3 colour shaders for everything to match the vectored illustrations.

All the 3D assets from the video in one pile

I made sure to stick a cameo from Marc in the last scene.

After sorting through a bunch of vaguely futuristic, upbeat options that weren’t the typical corporate aspirational music, I presented the options to Marc and he chose Michael Ramir C.’s Can’t Get You Off My Mind from MixKit.